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I’€™ve briefly mentioned my summer working on the Isle of Mull before. What I haven’€™t really told you about is how I came to love the place. I went there just after graduation to work for a charity running whale-watching tours and doing research on the local whale population. I had no idea what to expect, as my last visit to Scotland had been when I was in a pushchair as a child¹, and I was woefully prepared in practical terms. I think that I was also unprepared for how profound the experience would be.

I arrived in a rainstorm, so I couldn’t see much of my surroundings beyond blurry outlines swept away by the windscreen wipers as we bumped along in the Land Rover. At that point, I wondered quite what I had let myself in for. This feeling was reinforced when I found out that because of a slight shortage of space in the caravans, I would be living on the boat on my own. This turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me.

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p. I’ve just finished reading a really gripping book. ‘In Babylon’ tells the story of many generations of the Jewish Hollander family. They flee the Polish-Lithuanian border because of attacks by the Cossacks in the 17th Century, and gradually make their way gradually westwards until they finally reach America in the ’40s. For several generations, they were clockmakers, and literally carried time and—it is implied—their history on their backs as they went. This sweeping epic is anchored in the present day by Nathan Hollander (a writer of fairy tales) and his niece, Nina, who are trapped in Nathan’s uncle’s isolated house by a severe snow storm. In their enforced confinement, Nathan reads Nina the biography he has written of his uncle Herman. He has the historical version of a photographic memory, something that is aided considerably by his great great great grand Uncle Chaim, and and great great grand uncle Magnus turning up to have a coffee with him and discuss past events.

p. The novel brilliantly evokes a feeling of homesickness and rootlessness that the nomadic Nathan begins to feel, the small events that have such catastrophic import, and the endless secrets that even the closest families squirrel away. All of the interesting relationships are between diagonal relatives rather than direct ones: uncles and nephews, uncles and nieces. The secrets are very slowly unfurled, giving the book a feeling of a thriller. The end is rather shocking and surprising, but it’s also a moving, emotional and erotic book, and in places it is wryly funny. Uncle Chaim jokes that Magnus left the East because he loathed potatoes, and that Nathan’s father Manny agreed to go to America because he was promised that he wouldn’t have to wear a tie. There are some beautiful descriptive passages. Nathan and Nina discover a mysterious barricade made of furniture up the stairs of the house, and when they take an axe to the pile for firewood, throwing the priceless antiques down the stairs, Möring describes a mahogany chair as skipping down the stairs on delicate legs like an antelope.

p. The scope is so huge that it doesn’t always hang together as well as it might, but it certainly held my attention. That’s no small feat given the lack of time that I have to read things for pleasure. I also think that I’d like to read it again to pick up on some of the richness that might have passed me by the first time.

p. I like words. I like using them inventively and correctly, but I often need a lot of help. While I own several paper dictionaries and thesauruses (thesauri? I rest my case…), I’m a fan of the electronic versions because they obviate the need for that tedious trudge to the bookcase. Enter the new, free [“Nisus Thesaurus”:http://www.nisus.com/Thesaurus/]; it’s a neat little Cocoa application, with matching Services menu for quick lookup of words in other applications. Using it is pretty straightforward: you enter your word in the input box at the top, hit return, and wait for a plethora of synonyms to turn up. You get words that are similar to, opposite to, more general than, or more specific than the word you selected, and a definition of the word as well. It’s all very neat, and seems to come with quite a decent database of words.

p. I was trying to think of a word to test it with, and for some reason came up with ‘discombobulate’. An evil grin spread over my face—”That’ll fox it” I thought. But it didn’t. I even got two related definitions of discombobulate, including alternative words such as bemuse, bewilder, fox (ha!) and fuddle. In case you are curious, here are the definitions:

p. discombobulate (as in “bewilder”) v. : cause to be confused emotionally

p. discombobulate (as in “confuse”) v. : be confusing or perplexing to; cause to be unable to think clearly: “These questions confuse even the experts”; “This question completely threw me”; “This question befuddled even the teacher”

This could be excellent news; a new series of Dr. Who is going to be filmed. Russell T Davies—-who created ‘Queer As Folk’—-is going to write the new series, which could either mean that it’s really great or really bad. He is at least a big fan himself, and I’ve heard encouraging things about going back to the original feel of the series: an older and more eccentric Doctor, and perhaps even a return to the good old cheap rubber monsters, and scenes obviously shot in quarries.

To herald this momentous news on the Today programme, they played a previous clip of John Humphrys interviewing a dalek. It’s really a classic. Part of the exchange went like this (you can hear the full version here:

*Humphrys*: Good morning. *Dalek*: GOOD MORNING. I WAS PROMISED SUE MCGREGOR! [becoming more shrill and insistent] WHO ARE YOU? *Humphrys*: I’m John Humphrys. *Dalek*: NOT FOR LONG. EXTERMINATE!! *Humphrys*: I think many people think that…

Of course, Tom Baker is the one true Doctor… The classic theme music (written by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the days long before synthesisers were common) is also the best SciFi theme music ever.

p. “Channel 5”:http://www.five.tv/ seems to be determined to disguise its informative documentaries cunningly with copious amounts of schlock. Exhibit A: earlier in the week I watched a documentary called “Killer Squid Attack”. That title could only be made closer to the Channel 5 archetype by inserting the word ‘Nazi’. I suppose that I could try to claim that I knew all along it would be interesting, but the truth is that I just thought it might be funny. Plus I’m a bit of a [“cephalopod-ophile(Dan Hon’s cephalopod links)”:http://danhon.com/ec/mtarchives/2003/08/09/preemptivelybowingtocephalopoidoverlords/index.shtml#000613].

p. Imagine my surprise when the documentary actually turned out to be quite interesting. True, there was rather gratuitous use of ‘Jaws’-like background music, and a lot of talk of aggression, ‘frenzied attacks’ and cannibalism. My view is that if you’ve just been caught on a barbed hook, yanked out of an environment in which you can breathe, and had a piercing to insert a scientific identification tag, you’re entitled to a certain amount of tetchiness.

p. The ‘killer squid’ in question are the Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas), or—as they were dubbed in the programme—jumbo squid. Really, the word ‘jumbo’ should be reserved for food portions, which I suppose might apply to this species. “Jumbo squid rings, anyone?” They live in the Gulf of Mexico at depths of 200-700m, and are a pretty mysterious species. They are predatory, very curious about divers, and yes—they can be quite agressive, but then they are predators, and that’s really part of the job description.

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p. My latest cool software find is a little utility called [“Synergy”:http://synergy.wincent.com/]; it’s a small application which runs in the menu bar, and allows you to control iTunes without first switching to it or using the Dock menu. You might be thinking, “Pfft. Is that all? Loads of applications do that—what’s the big deal?” Well, the big deal is in the level of customization possible and the quality of the implementation.

p. All of the commands (play, pause, change volume, set a star rating and so on) can all have keyboard commands assigned, so that you never even need to venture near the menu bar with the mouse. You can also choose a number of different styles for the control buttons on the menu bar, and even set their spacing. But that’s not all; when the track changes, a transparent ‘floater’ appears showing the title, artist, and album, along with the star rating you’ve assigned, and—this is the corker in my view—the album cover art, which it downloads automatically if you’re connected to the network. It even appears with a kind of ‘sliding-out’ animation and then fades out, which is very slick and professional. All of this is also customizable, including what goes on the floater, where it appears, and how long for. Transparent floaters (like the built in volume and screen brightness ones) appear when you operate any of the controls to give you visual feedback.

p. I find it extremely convenient to have the new track information hover in the corner while I’m working, and to be able to just hit a system-wide key to control iTunes. I’ve mapped the main transport commands to the function keys plus command, which is very quick and easy. My MacNTouch even has markings on F8-F11 for play, stop, track forward and back (which will be functional in some future version of the firmware), so I have a visual reminder of which key does what.

p. Every now and again, you stumble upon a genuine gem on the web. Sometimes you find that the gem has been sitting under your nose for some time. Yesterday, I came across a particularly good one, courtesy of “dvd’s(fuddland)”:http://www.fuddland.org.uk/blog/ temporary page while his hosting move goes ahead. The page is an “online guide to pub etiquette”:http://www.sirc.org/publik/ptpintro.html produced by the Social Issues Research Centre, and is primarily an informative research document aimed at tourists to Britain. It’s detailed, funny and mostly very accurate, and should probably be handed out at Passport Contol to visitors to avoid embarrassing errors. However, it’s also a great read for Brits—the combination of thinking, “Oh, that’s so true”, getting worked up over statements you don’t agree with[1], and just chuckling about things you hadn’t realised about pubs until they are pointed out, is irresistable.

p. I’m amazed I haven’t come across it before. For one thing, I’ve actually “linked”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000273.html to another of their “social reports”:http://www.sirc.org/publik/whitevanman.html on the phenomenon of ‘white van man’. But even more shamefully, I cycle right past their offices every day on the way to work.

p. I can’t help thinking that conducting research on social etiquette in pubs is to the sociologist what sitting in a deckchair on a tropical beach counting some animal or other is to biologists—the Holy Grail.

fn1. The section on pub types worried me slightly as there were no warnings about avoiding pubs where customers come crashing through the windows mid-fight.

Before I start this mini-rant (rantette?), I should say that I love Apple’s Safari; it’s a quick, elegant and–most importantly–standards-compliant browser, and since they introduced tabbed browsing I have used it as my default browser for all but the most non-IE-phobic of sites. However, there are two (related) flies in the ointment. First, I hate the fact that there’s no easy way of saving all of the tabs in an open window manually (or even better, automatically). Second, I wish Safari would warn me when I’m about to close a tab-laden window or quit. Even though I generally sneer at dialogues that ask me if I’m sure I want to do X, in this case it would be invaluable. When I’ve been a complete muppet and hit quit, I would really love it if some kindly dialogue box came up and said:

Hi there! You seem to have quite a lot of tabs open, but you’re asking me to quit. Now, I’m sure that you know what you’re doing, but I thought I’d just ask you if you really want to lose all those links you’ve been patiently accumulating over the past few hours. We can just forget all about the whole “Quit” thing, or I could save those tabs for you and go for it. Anyway, it’s up to you. Sorry to have bugged you, dude.

For some reason, I always imagine my Mac to have a friendly–but ultimately very laid back–attitude, possibly as a result of illegal substances; a bit like Dylan the rabbit in The Magic Roundabout.

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p. Once you get off the major roads, finding your way around in Somerset isn’t easy. On our recent holiday, we managed to get ourselves lost repeatedly. Most of the junctions of minor roads are marked with old-fashioned finger posts, which—unless some drunken prankster has yanked the signs around so that they point in the wrong direction—have a number of white wooden signs pointing in the general direction of the destination, with legends like “Little Snoring 5 miles”. We’ve encountered navigational problems in the West Country before, so we took these signs with a generous pinch of salt (especially the distances quoted), but we still ended up getting lost.

p. I have a theory about why its so difficult to find your way around. During the Second World War, many of the signposts in rural areas were removed to avoid giving vital information to Nazi soldiers if there was ever an invasion. The idea was that the locals knew their way around anyway, and legitimate visitors could always ask for directions, but it would neatly foil any German invasion plans. I think it’s unlikely that the German army wouldn’t have any detailed maps or compasses, and would therefore be at the mercy of local signage, but it wasn’t a bad plan I suppose. I reckon that they just never got round to putting many of the signs back up again.

p. We discovered that if one road leading from a junction wasn’t signed, that was almost inevitably the way we needed to go. We were trying to find Luxborough, and discovered that not only was it not signposted, but that all the other places with signs to them weren’t actually shown on our map. With no way of telling where we were—or where Luxborough was—we resorted to the simple but rather time-consuming navigational technique of driving down every single road within a 15 mile radius until we just stumbled upon the village. Even when we did eventually get there, we almost went straight through it because it cunningly disguises itself as a cluster of three linked villages, none of which is actually called Luxborough. It was only by getting out of the car and scrutinizing posters on the notice board of the village hall that we found that we were already in Luxborough. Once we had found it though, we really appreciated the fact that it was hard to find; the last thing we wanted was lots of other people cluttering such a quiet and pretty place up.

p. Language seems to be a bit of a theme this week. I noticed that Maciej Ceglowski[1] of “Idlewords”:http://www.idlewords.com had written about a “Quebec blogger”:http://www.idlewords.com/weblog.09.2003.html#282 who was threatened with a fine by the Quebec Office of the French Language because parts of his web page were in English. In other words, exactly the opposite problem that we have in the UK—too many languages on one page.

p. Idlewords is always a great read, and his article also provided two other points of interest. One was the following joke:

“What do you call a person who speaks two languages?” “Bilingual.” “Three languages?” “Trilingual.” “One language?” “American.”

p. You could, of course substitute ‘British’ for ‘American’ without killing the punchline. The other thing that caught my attention was an offhand reference to the term [“on the gripping hand”:http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/o/onthegripping_hand.html]. This neatly solves a problem I regularly bump into when writing; you start off by saying, “on the one hand…”, followed by “on the other hand…”, only to realize—too late—that you’ve got a third thing to refer to but no more hands. Step forward “on the gripping hand”—sorted!

fn1. Bearing in mind “what I said”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000437.html about my lack of linguistic ability, I’m heartily thankful that you don’t have to hear me try to pronounce his name.

p. The place where I go to yoga class is usually fairly quiet and peaceful, but for some reason all kinds of auditory havoc was breaking out yesterday. First, someone’s mobile went off—it was on vibrate, but when the phone is lying on something that resonates, it might just as well be blasting out an irritating tune. Of course no one claimed responsibility, and because the friend of whoever owned the phone really wanted to get hold of them, it kept going off every five minutes or so. Then a car alarm went off just outside the fire doors (which we had opened to let a bit of cool air in). It can be quite hard at times to switch off your brain during class and just focus on your breathing and the postures (and on not getting your body stuck in some [“Gordian knot(The story of the Gordian knot)”:http://www.gordiansolutions.com/TheKnot.htm]). But with all this racket going on, it was hard to keep my mind from wandering on to thoughts like, “Does anyone have a 12-bore shotgun? That would take care of the car alarm and the phone in one go…

p. I remembered a trip to a temple while I was visiting India a few years ago. We were on an organised tour, and as we walked to the temple, our guide told us a little about what we were about to see. I thought I heard him say that there were “many fine examples of erratic carvings”, which set me puzzling over the ancient and mysterious art of erratic carving, and wondering how you would tell a fine example from a poor example. Once we reached the temple, and I saw the acres of eye-wateringly athletic stone couples disporting themselves over one entire wall of the temple, I realized that I had misheard an important vowel. Anyway, once the guide had managed to wrench our attention away from the ‘erratic carvings’ (by this time we were turning our heads sideways to see if we could work out what was going where), he showed us a panel depicting a serenely smiling man meditating in the lotus position, with a herd of stampeding elephants in the background. He said that it was to remind worshippers that—if you do it properly—you can meditate whatever chaos is going on around you.

p. So I suppose that car alarms and mobile phones are the modern equivalent of a herd of stampeding elephants. I’ll tell you what makes it really hard to concentrate, though—erratic carvings.

p. …to which the British seem immune.

p. I was listening to a report on the Today programme on Radio 4 a couple of days ago about the “Swedish Euro referendum(BBC News)”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3108616.stm], and one thing amazed and embarrassed me. They were doing a vox pop and found at least half a dozen Swedish citizens who spoke virtually flawless English. Now, they may have searched for a while to find enough people who fitted the bill, but even so, I can’t help thinking that the situation would be vastly different in Britain. Imagine a French reporter asking questions (in French) on the streets of a large city in Britain—how long do you think it would take before you found 6 people who could understand the question, let alone answer it in French? My guess would be several months, if you didn’t count any French tourists you came across. I’m sure that you would end up with audio tape filled with Brits shouting “Do you speak English?”

p. I know that we often don’t need to speak other languages when abroad because so many people speak such good English, but that’s a pathetic excuse. I’m as guilty as anyone; like many people, I learnt French for a couple of years at school, and I now know barely enough to get by. Actually, my comprehension is reasonably good[1] in a ‘getting the gist’ kind of way, but my production is dreadful, and my grammar truly appalling. Before I travelled to [“New Caledonia”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000419.html], I tried to brush up my schoolgirl French a bit, and was very glad that I did. I ended up camping on the land of a “Kanak(Information about New Caledonia and its people)”:http://www.abc.net.au/ra/pacific/places/country/new_caledonia.htm family who spoke no English, so my French had to improve pretty quickly, or I was facing a very lonely month. I don’t think that I did too badly—the family were very kind about ignoring my grammatical attocities and completely invented vocabulary—but my abilities were still put to shame by those Swedes I heard on the radio.

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p. Vim just gets more and more amazing. I was looking around for a free touch typing tutorial program, just to refresh my skills a bit and practice on the new keyboard. I found a plugin for Vim called [“TTCoach(Vim.org)”:http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=461], written by Mikolaj Machowski which does just that. You can start at any level and it measures your speed, accuracy, and logs the percentage of errors produced by each finger and each letter, which is pretty useful. It can even display a little ASCII representation of your keyboard, where the ‘keys’ are highlighted when you hit them, so that you have visual feedback without having to look at the real keyboard.

A few months ago, I wrote about the new MacNTouch keyboard. After a long period of thinking about it, an even longer period of trying to find the cheapest place to order one from, and what seemed—because of my impatience and excitement—like a geological epoch, I finally slid my hands over a MacNTouch. Part of my reason for wanting one was because I’d started to have some problems with pains in my hands while typing, and I didn’t want it to get too bad before I did anything about it. But if I’m brutally honest, a large part of my decision can by summed up by the phrase “because it’s cool”.

It was certainly well worth the wait. I’ve had a few days with it now, and I like it a lot. When I get more proficient at typing accurately with it, I think that it will become indispensible. It’s basically a drop-in replacement for the keyboard which ships with the 15” PowerBook keyboard, and once fitted, it sits very nicely in the same space. Due to some Apple imposed constraints, the keyboard can’t use the internal keyboard connection, but the solution of a very flat ribbon cable which passes under the screen and plugs in flush to one of the USB ports is pretty neat. The keyboard itself is like a huge and much more sophisticated touch pad. Apart from 8 little bumps to identify the 8 keys of the home row, the keyboard is totally flat and smooth, and has the keys marked on in curving rows, with the two sides separated by vertically arranged function keys. It has very sophisticated software which allows it to distinguish which fingers are being placed on it, and the timing of the taps or slides.

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p. I always struggle to describe Laurie Anderson’s music to other people. She plays rather avant-garde music, which is part performance art and part story-telling. She has always used electronic instruments extensively (including some of her own making), and many of her songs involve her deepening the pitch of her voice dramatically to form what she calls ‘the voice of authority’. If that description has convinced you that you would hate this album, then I can only say that I’ve just proved my own point: you really need to listen to her music rather relying on my feeble descriptions.

p. My own first introduction to Laurie Anderson (and her only chart hit in the UK) was the first track on this album—’O Superman’. I hated it with a passion. In my defence, I was in my early teens, and mainly listening to Michael Jackson at the time, so it was perhaps not surprising that I just didn’t get it. It also sounds horrible on a tinny radio—you really need to hear it in a quiet environment, and on a decent stereo to pick up all the subtleties. I’ve been lucky enough to see her perform live a few times, and on the last occasion (a few months after 9/11), she performed ‘O Superman’. It blew me away. It has always been quite a moving and disturbing song—with an atmosphere of loss, alienation and fear—but it has gained whole new layers of associations.

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